History Literature / RainbowSix

** Oso's M60 machine gun, which he laments he never gets to use. He only ever gets to shoot out windows with it.

* AFateWorseThanDeath: The [[spoiler:Horizon executives]] get to experience the wonderful jungle without any tools (or clothes!) as a means to commune with nature. Clark notes that jungle survival is tough as nails for him, a hardened Navy vet, even ''with'' state-of-the-art survival gear, and gives them a month to live, tops. [[spoiler:Sure enough, satellite recon shows none of them got out of the jungle.]]
** One of the IRA terrorists gets his face scraped off when the van he's in is overturned.

** After the Bern mission, Dr. Below explains to Chavez the difference between "Bad Terrorists" - like the one they just faced, and "Good Terrorists". The good ones believe in their ideology in much the same way an adult at church does, and are far more careful about how they approach a task, but devoted to what they do and go all in. The very next group of terrorists Rainbow faces, of course, matches that exact definition.
** After the mission at the mansion, and with now two successful missions and no casualties (during Rainbow's involvement), Ding feels pretty good. Dr. Below and Clark both warn him that the day may come where he has to let the terrorists kill a hostage, because the situation doesn't allow them to act without risking more casualties. This happens in the next mission, where a child hostage is executed while Ding and Covington are scouting the area right around the corner.

* FriendlySniper: Both team two snipers are like this.

* PinkMist: Clancy, for all your realistically gory headshot descriptions. This is especially prevalent in ''Rainbow Six'', because counter-terrorists are always trained to go for the head.

** The couple later fit Dr. Below's earlier description of "Good Terrorists"; they are the first whom, ignoring their goals which they were tricked into by Popov, don't commit obvious tactical blunders and for the first time pose a challenge to Rainbow as they realize they forgot to acquire a helicopter, forcing them to improvise. While less kill crazy than Ernst, they have far more ideological dedication and thus will not even consider backing out. While Ernst killed when he lost his cool, these are ready to kill anything and anyone between them and their goal.

* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: Invoked – albeit (presumably) involuntarily – when a freed Swiss hostage describes one of the hostage-takers' accents as: "Mixed. Something of Hamburg, but something of Bavaria, too." Not only is this linguistically implausible[[note]]Simply put: "mixed" dialects occur only regionally – in adjacent regions where two historically distinct dialects clash – as far as individual speakers are concerned, the speaker will more likely be prone to "channel-switching", i.e. falling back into their home dialect when around speakers from that region and speaking with an acquired accent when around speakers of that respective dialect[[/note]], but it also hardly describes what that accent or dialect is supposed to sound like. Translated into an US-example that would be like saying: "He spoke with a bit of a Brooklyn accent, but there was some Downtown-L.A. in it, too."

* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: Invoked – albeit (presumably) involuntarily – when a freed Swiss hostage describes one of the hostage-takers' accents as: "Mixed. Something of Hamburg, but something of Bavaria, too." Not only is this linguistically implausible[[note]]Simply put: "mixed" dialects occur only regionally – in adjacent regions where two historically distinct dialects clash – as far as individual speakers are concerned, the speaker will more likely be prone to "channel-switching", i.e. falling back into their home dialect when around speakers from that region and speaking with an acquired dialect when around speakers of that respective dialect[[/note]], but it also hardly describes what that accent or dialect is supposed to sound like. Translated into an US-example that would be like saying: "He spoke with a bit of a Brooklyn accent, but there was some Downtown-L.A. in it, too."

* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: Invoked – albeit (presumably) involuntarily – when a freed Swiss hostage describes one of the hostage-takers' accents as: "Mixed. Something of Hamburg, but something of Bavaria, too." Not only is this linguistically implausible[[note]]Simply put: "mixed" dialects occur only regionally – in adjacent regions where two historically distinct dialects clash – as far as individual speakers are concerned, the speaker will more likely be prone to "channel-switching", i.e. falling back into their home dialect when around speakers from that region and speaking with an acquired dialect when around speakers of that respective dialect[[/note]], but it also hardly describes what that accent or dialect is supposed to sound like. Translated into an US-example that would be like saying: "He spoke with a Brooklyn accent, but there was some Downtown-L.A. in it, too."

* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: Invoked – albeit (presumably) involuntarily – when a freed Swiss hostage describes one of the hostage-takers' accents as: "Mixed. Something of Hamburg, but something of Bavaria, too."
Not only is this linguistically implausible[[note]]Simply put: "mixed" dialects occur only regionally – in adjacent regions where two historically distinct dialects clash – as far as individual speakers are concerned, the speaker will more likely be prone to "channel-switching", i.e. falling back into their home dialect when around speakers from that region and speaking with an acquired dialect when around speakers of that respective dialect[[/note]], but it also hardly describes what that accent or dialect is supposed to sound like. Translated into an US-example that would be like saying: "He spoke with a Brooklyn accent, but there was some Downtown-L.A. in it, too."

* BlastingItOutOfTheirHands: To a degree. Dieter Weber shoots the machine pistol a terrorist is holding, which doesn't knock it out of the terrorist's hands, but blows the gun in half. It's noted that it's not to non-lethally knock it away (it hurts the terrorist), but it's to let Homer Johnston line him up for a gut shot in revenge for [[spoiler:executing a small child.]]

* ContinuityError: ''Many''.
** Popov is introduced as someone who has "no love" for homosexuals, and willing to kill someone to steal money. At the end of the story, when he kills [[spoiler: Foster Hunnicutt]], he notes that he's never had to kill anyone before. He's also significantly less violent during the story than he is during the introduction.
** In the first mission, Stanley is sent along with Team 2 on the mission to provide oversight, and then isn't mentioned again until the after action report. After the end of the second mission, Stanley and Clark talk about the need for executive oversight of the teams, and change the mission orders so that one of them will always go along on a mission with the teams.
** Several other smaller errors crop up throughout the story, making it read almost like a second draft.

In 2017, it's announced that a Rainbow Six film will be spearheaded by Paramount with Josh Appelbaum & Andre Nemec as the writers.

** Earlier in the book, it is noted that this is ''explicitly'' against Rainbow policy as it is assumed that terrorists carry back ups, which is often a [[TakingYouWithMe grenade]]. And indeed, Ding chews both snipers out on this later, even if he understands why Dieter and Homer did it and lets them off with just a warning this one time.

** Eddie Price's habit of smoking a pipe. By the end of the third terrorist incident Popov had caught on from this that Rainbow is not the country's police or special forces, but covert ops.

* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Played with - John Brightling isn't corrupted, and is honest in dealings and making pharmaceuticals that work. He also wants to murder the Earth via horrible virus.
* CurbStompBattle: In the book's climax, the ecoterrorists send out untrained, inadequately armed squads of men against a crack counterterrorist team with sensors capable of pinpointing their exact location. Of thirty sent against eight, four survive, and more would've died if one of the terrorists hadn't triggered his gun when he was killed. The Rainbow troopers are never in serious danger, and only realize after the fact that it was functionally murder instead of a combat action.
* DashingHispanic: [[BadassBystander Francisco De]] [[RetiredBadass La Cruz]] who attempts to kill a terrorist with an UZI using only a sword, injuring him. Every single member of Rainbow makes a point of shaking his hand after they finish the mission.

** Each foe the teams face is also larger than the last, the hijackers have three men, the Ernst's team has four. The couple that raid the private home have themselves and four mercenaries. The team that attacks the amusement park has ten, the PIRA has fifteen. The group in the jungle at the end has '''fifty four,''' though only thirty five actually fight.

** The PIRA is a known terrorist group earlier used to build the Badass credentials of several Rainbow members who spent years fighting them. They also have even more members than the previous group. They target Rainbow itself, and are willing to resort to morally dubious plans to achieve this: targeting their families and hitting a hospital. They are defeated almost entirely through luck of Noonan having ''just'' acquired software to block cellphone communication, killing their ability to coordinate their forces, and their lack of knowledge that there are two Rainbow teams, not just one - so that when they ambush Team-1, they are unaware that Team-2 is just up the road. They push Team-2 to the limit, forcing them to go in without a plan at all.

* Each foe the teams face is also larger than the last.
** The hijackers have three men, the Ernst's team has four. The couple that raid the private home have themselves and four mercenaries. The team that attacks the amusement park has ten, the PIRA has fifteen. The group in the jungle at the end has '''fifty four,''' though only thirty five actually fight.

* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: Subverted. Failing to use this trope with respect to Popov is what gets Horizon Corp's schemes busted.

* AnimalWrongsGroup: Horizon is a world threatening terrorist version of this trope: utilizing a BatmanGambit in setting off attacks to gain attention, then getting their own soldiers as security to unleash a virus to wipe out the human race, then spreading said virus masked as a vaccine after the initial outbreak.

* XanatosGambit: Regardless of whether the [[spoiler: eco-terrorist corporation backed]] terrorists succeeded or failed in their goals [[spoiler: Horizon Corporation]] would still benefit [[spoiler: (the real goal was to increase awareness of terrorism so Horizon would get the security contract for the Olympic Games where they planned to unleash the [[DepopulationBomb Shiva Virus]]).]]

** Extra dumb points are awarded for because in this continuity, the last group of people who attacked the US with biowarfare -- very recently -- set off a chain of events that ended with the US government making a public threat to use ''nuclear weapons'' if their terms of unconditional surrender were not immediately met, something the US government hasn't done since ''World War II''. Brightling's group, which included a former senior supervisory special agent of the FBI and a former Presidential cabinet advisor, should not have for a nanosecond believed that refusal to surrender to law enforcement custody immediately would result in anything less than their certain deaths at the hands of a full-scale US military assault -- which almost is what happens to them.

* TooDumbToLive: When they realize they have been found out, the Horizon executives flee to a South American compound. What do they do when they find out that Rainbow, a team of highly trained special forces soldiers are after them? Send out groups of men armed with hunting rifles and with zero combat experience (who are under the impression that their years of hunting game ''in woodland and savannah that is nothing like the jungle'' puts them on the level of a special forces sniper) into the jungle to hunt them down! What can possibly go wrong?

** The first group of terrorists in the prologue are so inept their plan had no chance of success (The person they were trying to kidnap wasn't even on the plane), and were thwarted by equally unprepared people of superior skills.
** Ernst Model is also inept, but more dangerous, and actually kills a hostage. Ultimately his own sociopathy and hair trigger temper are what sinks his own operation. He's taken out by Rainbow on their first mission and serves as a WarmupBoss to Ding, who at this point is struggling with confidence issues over his own command skills due to working with people with more solid anti-terrorist experience than him, like his own number 2 and the head of Team-1.

* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler:Popov.]] Despite getting people that trusted him killed, and despite organizing the death of several Team-1 members, he gets away unpunished. In fact, he becomes rich(er), thanks to taking over a ranch from one of the Horizon executives.

* EveryoneHasStandards: Clark and Ding are hardened special forces {{badass}}es who've done many questionable things. Clark in particular has carried out creatively vicious JackBauerInterrogationTechnique. Nevertheless, they find the CurbStompBattle against the ecoterrorists so one-sided it's pure murder.

* FluffyTheTerrible: "Team Rainbow," a collection of the World's Biggest {{Badass}}es.

* AKA47: In a rare lapse, "the new version of the venerable MP-5, chambered instead for the 10-mm Smith & Wesson cartridge" is erroneously referred to as the "[=MP-10=]"; it's actually the [=MP5/10=], the "MP-10" designation instead used for a clone from the Philippines-based Special Weapons. There has been [[InternetBackdraft considerable debate]] regarding this given the usual amount of attention given to these kinds of details, with [[WordOfGod Clancy himself saying at one point]] that he had personally seen and fired the [=MP-10=].

* ArtisticLicense: The chronology of this story doesn't line up with a plot point from the previous novels. ''Debt of Honor'' and ''Executive Orders'' both explicitly take place during a Presidential election year, and this book mentions that they happened at about a year before. But the Summer Olympics are a key event in this novel, and those are on the same four year cycle as the US Presidential Elections. Which means that either all three must have happened in the same year despite explicit statements that they didn't, or this takes place a full election cycle later, which contradicts statements about the chronology in later novels.

* BlastingItOutOfTheirHands: To a degree. Dieter Weber shoots the machine pistol a terrorist is holding, which doesn't knock it out of the terrorist's hands, but renders it unusable. It's noted that it's not to non-lethally knock it away (it hurts the terrorist), but it's to line him up for a gut shot in revenge for [[spoiler:executing a small child.]]
** Earlier in the book, it is noted that this is ''explicitly'' against Rainbow policy as it is assumed that Terrorists carry back ups (often a grenade). And indeed, Ding chews both snipers out on this later, even if he understands why Dieter and Homer did it.

* ElitesAreMoreGlamorous: Rainbow is made up of Special Forces commandos from around the world (Navy [=SEALs=], Army Rangers, Green Berets, Mossad, Special Air Service, GSG-9, and Delta Force)

** Clark says, in the wake of the [[spoiler:IRA ambush on the Rainbow compound]], all the Irish investigators involved who were sympathetic to Irish independence ''weren't'' as sympathetic when they found out this [[spoiler:this branch of the IRA]] ran drugs.

** After the Bern Mission, Dr. Below explains to Chavez the difference between "Bad Terrorists" - like the one they just faced, and "Good Terrorists". The good ones believe in their ideology in much the same way an adult at church does, and are far more careful about how they approach a task, but devoted to what they do and go all in. The very next group of Terrorists Rainbow faces, of course, matches that exact definition.

** And, of course, the Irish Terrorists claim to be anti-drug, but they deal cocaine as a way of funding their operations.

* SortingAlgorithmOfEvil: The Terrorists faced through the book fit the trope to a tee. Each subsequent terrorist raises the bar in terms of skill, danger posed, and even in terms of "Evil".
** The first group of Terrorists in the prologue are so inept their plan had no chance of success (The person they were trying to kidnap wasn't even on the plane), and were thwarted by equally unprepared people of superior skills.

** The couple later fit Dr. Below's earlier description of "Good Terrorists"; they are the first whom, ignoring their goals which they were tricked into by Popov, don't commit obvious tactical blunders and for the first time pose a challenge to Rainbow as they realize they forgot to acquire an helicopter, forcing them to improvise. While less kill crazy than Ernst, they have far more ideological dedication and thus will not even consider backing out. While Ernst killed when he lost his cool, these are ready to kill anything and anyone between them and their goal.
** The Terrorists at the Amusement Park are again a step up, being the largest group encountered so far, and tied to a RealLife terrorist of known danger and skill (The Jackal). They show there are no lines they will not cross to accomplish their goals when they take sick children hostage and then ''execute one''. They also pick the most complex locale for Rainbow to assault. For the first time both teams deploy.

* XanatosGambit: Regardless of whether the [[spoiler: eco-terrorist corporation backed]] terrorists succeeded or failed in their goals [[spoiler: Horizon Corporation]] would still benefit [[spoiler: (the real goal was to increase awareness of terrorism so Horizon would get the security contract for the Olympic Games where they planned to unleash the [[DepopulationBomb Shiva Virus]])]]

* {{Badass}}
** BadassBookworm: Tim Noonan, the tech expert, who shoots as well as the shooters of both Rainbow team and kills three terrorists during the PIRA attack.
** BadassCrew: The whole point of Rainbow
** ColonelBadass: Ding and Covington fit the spot, though not the ranks.
*** MajorlyAwesome: Ding's simulated rank (simulated because Rainbow is technically not military) is Major.
** FourStarBadass: John Clark

** One can handwave it in that their plan just fell apart at the very last minute, and they had no contingencies to both being found out, and the plan failing, so late in the game, so they figure taking some distance to build their legal defense. They also likely never figured RAINBOW would immediately muster against them - prior to this RAINBOW had only responded to incident in progress. They are in fact sort of right in their expectation - Clark is told the military won't move right away, but RAINBOW can. It's an idiotic decision made on wrong assumptions by people out of their elements who are panicking.